Widders forgets slur to douse Dragons' fire
By Steve Mascord
July 9, 2005
"Dummy, right foot step, dummy, right foot - all week. If I had a dollar for every time I said it, I could retire."
So said St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown last night after his Dragons team had their fire extinguished by Parramatta bench star Dean Widders.
It should have been THE story out of the Eels' 40-14 victory over the Dragons at Parramatta Stadium. Six days after he was racially vilified, Widders set up two of centre Ben Smith's three tries and scored one himself.
But then Trent Barrett started throwing punches at PJ Marsh, relegating Widders to second fiddle. A rather elusive fiddle, all the same, according to Brown.
"Dummy and right foot," he repeated. "He does it every time he gets the ball. He turns up and she still works. Good player. He's playing really well."
Widders's flick pass to Smith in the 32nd minute was one of the best this season. "I just had to sit the ball out there somewhere," he shrugged.
His contribution to the second Smith try seven minutes later was nothing short of sporting poetry.
After a nice run and offload by Michael Vella, he took the ball in a two-on-two situation and used - ahem - a dummy and step to burn off one defender with callous disregard. "Whoever it was defending, he was dividing his bets," Widders said. "I knew if I dummied he was going to take it."
Smith popped up exactly where he was supposed to be and scored.
And then Armidale's favourite son took a pass from Eric Grothe just after half-time and sped away like a winger over 40 metres to put the Eels in front for the last time.
Widders reckoned the events of the previous week, which saw South Sydney's Bryan Fletcher fined, suspended and stripped of the captaincy for calling him a "black c---", didn't have much impact on last night's events.
"I wasn't out there to point the finger," he said. "I was just glad we could set an example for kids, both of us combined.
"A lot of people don't realise that those sort of words hurt. To a lot of people they are just words but to a lot of indigenous people, we really get offended.
"I know Fletch, he's a great fella. He didn't mean it in a bad way. I wasn't about to go out there and hound him.
"We put it to rest in one or two days. That was the best thing about it."
Widders took only 49 minutes to put St George Illawarra to rest.
He's scored eight tries off the bench this season, using a move everyone knows about but no one can stop.
